The Bridal Veil (37 page)

She came out to the wagon. “Luke! You
didn’t see Rose on the way home?”

He frowned down at her, the lines
still in his hands. “No, why?”

“
Oh, I was hoping she was
with you. I told her to be home from Cora’s by four o’clock and
it’s past five. She knows we eat at five-thirty.”

“
Has she been home at
all?”

“
No, I haven’t seen her
since she left for school this morning.” Emily wrung the corner of
her apron in slender hands that shook.

He lifted his gaze and scanned the
fields, as if he’d find her out there. But all he saw were plowed
and planted rows. “Maybe she stayed late at Cora’s. I’ll go over
there.” Somehow, he suspected that Cora was involved in this, and
her place seemed like the logical place to start
looking.

“
I’ll stay here in case she
comes back. Dear God, she’s all right, don’t you think?” Emily’s
face was a study of worry.

“
Sure, she’s fine,” he said
with a lot more confidence than he felt. “She probably just lost
track of time. Or she’s checking on the ducklings down at the
creek. Kids are that way.” He reached down and gave her shoulder a
gentle squeeze. “I’ll go get her and bring her home.”

Emily nodded, and looked a little
relieved. “All right.”

Luke turned the wagon around in the
barnyard and headed out again, this time for Cora’s farm. He still
had three good hours of daylight left if he needed them to search
for his girl. But he knew he wouldn’t. He’d get to Cora’s and Rose
would see the wagon and come running out, looking shame-faced and
sheepish. He’d give her a little talking-to and make sure she
apologized to Emily, and that would be the end of it.

But he kept a vigilant watch as he
drove to Cora’s, looking for any sign of glossy, dark hair, or the
flashing movement of a new pale-blue dress covered with a clean,
white apron. He peered through the dense undergrowth that was still
green from the rainfall, and over the tops of wild lupines that
were nearly as tall as Rose. He saw nothing.

Finally he pulled into the road that
led to Cora’s place. When he neared the house, he saw that the door
was open, but his girl didn’t come running out. He set the wagon
brake and wound the lines around the brake handle.

As he jumped down, Cora came out with
her arms crossed over her chest, her very stance defensive and
belligerent. It was the same one he’d seen so many times before, he
felt as if he were reliving a bad dream. Except this time, his
daughter was somehow involved. And this time, if Cora gave him
trouble, she was in for the tongue-lashing of her life.

“
Cora, I’m looking for
Rose.”

She uncrossed her arms. “Didn’t she
come home?”

“
No. Is she
here?”

“
Of course not. She left
here about two hours ago. She was upset.”

He crossed the yard and climbed the
porch. “Upset—what about?”

“
She told me what Mrs.
Becker said to her.”

He sighed and pushed a hand through
his hair. “Cora, I’m not in the mood for guessing games. What are
you talking about?”

“
Well, I thought you knew.
Rose said that Mrs. Becker told her the truth about you—that you’re
not her father. She left here crying and said she was going home. I
tried to stop her but she wouldn’t listen and just ran
off.”

Luke felt as if the painted planks
beneath his feet tilted suddenly. “Rose told you that?”

“
She did. I thought it was a
cruel thing for your wife to do to the poor child.” Cora’s mouth
flattened into a thin, white line. “She didn’t need to know that,
although Mrs. Becker seemed to think it was best.”

Something about this all seemed wrong
to Luke, like parts of a watch that wouldn’t go back together. How
could Emily do such a thing? Why would she? Then he remembered the
night in the kitchen when he’d told Emily the story of Brad Tilson.
She hadn’t agreed with his decision to keep it from
Rose.

 
. . . shouldn’t you tell her?

 
. . . what would it do to her to find it out
from someone else? It’s a risky secret to keep.

Emily was stubborn, and believed she
knew it all when it came to teaching young girls. Well, this time
she was wrong. Dead wrong. He didn’t know what possessed her to
tell Rose such a private thing.

Right now, all Luke knew was that his
daughter was missing, and according to Cora, Emily might be the
reason why.

He spun on his heel and ran back to
the wagon. Cora called after him but he didn’t hear what she said.
He couldn’t hear much of anything except the blood rushing through
his head, driven by fear and anger.

As he lashed the horses to get back to
the farm, the lumber slid around in the wagon bed behind him, and
one plank bounced out. But Luke didn’t stop. He couldn’t think of
anything except Rose and one other horrible fact. He’d been
betrayed again.

Emily had betrayed his trust, just as
Belinda had.

~~*~*~*~~

Emily sat on the porch watching the
road, but she couldn’t see very well from there. Every few minutes
she ran down the drive to the fence, looking for Luke, looking for
Rose, but she found neither. At last she gave up going back to the
porch and climbed to the top fence rail to wait.

And the waiting was torture. God, it
was like the fire in Chicago, not knowing if your world was about
to end, or that everything would be all right. Or the moment when
Alyssa had been hit. She’d prayed that her sister was alive, but
she knew it couldn’t possibly be true. Luke had said Rose was fine,
but her heart told her something was horribly wrong.

Where was that girl? Was she with
Cora, as Luke had said, or was she lost or hurt? Emily’s head
throbbed with worry. Everywhere she looked, she was reminded of
Rose. The wild lupines that grew along the fence line, the
twittering little birds in the trees, Cotton’s grave next to the
fallen oak—Rose’s imprint was on this land and on her
heart.

At last, when she thought she could
bear it no longer, she saw Luke’s wagon racing up the road. But he
was alone in it, and he was lashing the team like the devil was
after him. Oh, God, it must be something bad—

She climbed down from the fence and
ran after the wagon as he drove it into the yard.

When she caught up to it, she was
breathless and dizzy. “Rose—she—wasn’t at—she’s not
with—”

“
If she’s not here, I don’t
know where she is.” He barked it out, impatient, angry.

“
What did—what did Cora
say?”

He jumped down from the seat and
advanced on Emily. The look on his face was so fearsome, she backed
up, and stumbled over a rock half-buried in the soft dirt. “I’ll
tell you what she said. She said that Rose told her she knows I’m
not her real father.”

She tried to clutch her heart with her
hand. “Oh, no! Did Cora tell her that?”

“
No, Emily, you did. And
after I told you I didn’t want Rose to know.”

She could not have been more surprised
or hurt if he’d slapped her. “I did no such thing!” But it was as
if he couldn’t hear her.

“
I trusted you with my
daughter, the one person in this world who has made my life
worthwhile, and this is where it got me.” His handsome face twisted
into a hideous mask of rage and frustration. “Damn it, I offered
you a home and my protection when I could have left you standing on
that dock in the rain. This is how you return the favor? Did you
think you think because you taught at some fancy girl’s school you
know more about how to raise my daughter than I do? Well, I may
have bungled it the last few years, but I’ve been part of her life
since she was a baby. I know her better than anybody. You’ve known
her barely a season. One more thing. Nobody hurts my daughter.
Nobody.” His smoke-colored eyes had turned black, and Emily
expected him to actually strike her.

Instead he turned and began walking
back toward the road.

She stood there stunned, her feet
planted in the yard as if his harsh words had nailed them in place.
He was leaving. She sprang into action and trotted after him, hard
pressed to keep up with his long strides. “Where are you
going?”

“
Where the hell do you think
I’m going? I’m going to look for my girl!”

“
Please—let me come with
you. I want to help.”

He spun on her again.
“You’ve done enough,
teacher
. Goddamn it, I never should
have accepted you in your sister’s place! I should have figured out
a way to pay your fare back to Chicago, and get you as far away
from us as I could.”

He hadn’t touched her, but Emily felt
as winded as if he’d kicked her in the stomach. She stopped running
after him and watched as he strode away as rain began falling
again.

~~*~*~*~~

Back in the house, Emily took the
wedding ring off her little finger and gently laid it on the
kitchen table. Then she dragged up the stairs and went to the room
she had occupied when she arrived. Her clothes and belongings were
still in that room, along with her trunk and her canvas Gladstone
bag. She moved like an automaton, scarcely aware of her actions as
she crossed from the wardrobe to the bed, laying out her things,
from the bureau to her bag, carefully folding each garment, and
tucking away each belonging. She would leave here as soon she knew
what had happened to Rose. How could she continue this sham of a
marriage and stay with a man who did not trust her? Who believed
that she was capable of hurting a child, and who so obviously had
no feelings for her? Oh, she’d tried to fool herself for a while,
telling herself that he cared, that their time together at night
meant something to him. But he’d never stated anything as plainly
as he had just moments ago.

I never should have
accepted you in your sister’s place.

It was the same refrain she’d heard
all her life. She would never be what her sister was. Oh, she could
dream about it, pretend for a little while in the dark with Luke,
but the truth was, she was tall, gawky Emily, who used manners and
rules as her only shield against being hurt. But even that shield
had been taken away from her. In the end, the one man who should
have believed she would never violate such a confidence had so
little regard for her or her integrity that he thought her capable
of betraying his trust.

When she opened her trunk, she lifted
out the bridal gown and veil, because they must be packed on top.
Like pouring salt into an open wound, Emily opened the clouds of
tissue paper surrounding the veil and looked at it. She’d always
believed it would be her lucky charm. Now she knew think that it
was her curse. She was cursed for wanting something she did not
have coming to her, for wanting to be something she wasn’t. It had
been in her hands for a few precious days, only to be yanked away
again. But just as Dickens’s Jacob Marley was bound in death to
carry the chains he’d forged in life, so was Emily bound to carry
this gown and veil with her.

Tears ran like rivers down her face,
blurring her vision, but she kept working, pausing only to swipe at
her eyes with her sleeve. She had enough money to make it to
Portland. Once there, she would sell the dress and the veil for
passage to Chicago. Maybe then, she would be free of her chains.
Maybe she’d also find a sort of peace, as long as she didn’t try to
be more than she was.

As she laid the items in her trunk,
she found the pink satin hair ribbon that she had given Rose and
that Rose had rejected. She draped it across her open palm and
looked at it. So many hurts had been piled upon Emily here. She’d
been willing to brave them through because she thought that Luke
and Rose had needed her. And she’d had hope.

The ribbon her sister had given her
was one of the few keepsakes that she still had. She’d left
everything else behind in Chicago to come out here, including her
sister’s grave. After the accident, Emily had gone to visit Alyssa
at Rosehill Cemetery a few times because she’d had no one else to
talk to.

Emily’s head came up suddenly at the
thought. Rose might be thinking the same thing—that she had no one
else to talk to. And Emily knew exactly where she would go in such
an event.

She had found Rose at the cemetery
once before. Oh, the poor thing—there was a chance, a good
chance—

Emily abandoned her packing, leaving
the Gladstone bag and her trunk open. Charging downstairs, she
dashed through the hall and the kitchen. Pausing to scratch a quick
note to Luke, she then flung open the back door, and ran outside
into the rain.

~~*~*~*~~

“
Rose! Rose, can you hear
me?” Luke was nearly hoarse from calling his daughter. He’d left on
foot to comb the dense vegetation along the roadsides, and then
began to regret it. If he found her and she was hurt, he’d have no
way to transport her. The creek edge had yielded no sign of Rose.
Even the ducks had abandoned the ferns near its swollen
waters.

He was soaked to the skin and the
cloudy sky meant that it would get dark sooner than he’d originally
considered. Where could she be? he wondered anxiously. Where would
she run if she didn’t go home?